Pratt & Whitney Canada

Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) is interested to further investigate the use of novel Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC's) technologies, in order to improve their products by reducing weight and increasing performances of their engines. Current applications of PMC's in P&WCs engine are mostly limited to cold section parts (

Powder metallurgy uses metal powders to produce parts of varying complexity. The processes can generally be divided in two big steps. The first is to form the powder into the required shape. This is generally done by pressing or molding the powder. The second step is to consolidate the powder into a solid piece of metal. This is done by heating the formed powder just below its melting temperature. At this point the metal particles will slowly coalesce into a uniform metal structure.

Non-metallic technologies, including composite materials, have the potential to improve aircraft engines performances and fuel efficiency, and therefore gained a lot of popularity in the aerospace sector in the past decades. Therefore, the overall objective of this research project is to develop an understanding of all available non-metallic technologies, their maturity and value proposition when applied to Pratt & Whitney Canada engines. The intern will contribute to accelerate the development and incorporation of specific non-metallic components in Pratt & Whitney engines.

Turbine discs are critical rotating parts of aircraft turbofan jet engines and are manufactured as separate units. In order for production acceptance of the forging technique used to manufacture turbine discs, a large amount of testing is conducted. This testing completed on raw materials and finished products includes a series of tensile and Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) specimen testing. Based on the test data, this proposed research aims to determine a relationship between tensile properties and LCF life.

Bell Helicopter Textron Canada Limited and Pratt & Whitney Canada have all initiated research projects on Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. Although applications are different, all companies are facing the same challenges, including the lack of a mature Canadian supply chain. The purpose of the current project is to bring together the whole value chain (Certification authorities, OEMs, Suppliers, Universities & Research Centers) to collaborate on common tasks for the development of the capability to design, produce, inspect and certify parts using AM processes.

Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC) seeks to improve the monitoring of its machining process aiming to reduce cost and prevent the tools, workpieces and machine damages during the machining. To achieve this improvement, data mining and advanced artificial intelligence technique which called Logical Analysis of Data (LAD) is used. LAD has ability to identify conditions of tools and of determining which machining conditions can indicate the tool failure or degradation is happening, and which can be considered redundant.

Additive manufacturing is an innovative and promising technology that has potential to provide the aerospace industry with many benefits in the design and fabrication of aerospace components. Advantages to the additive manufacturing process include: the ability to fabricate complex designs not easily obtained through traditional manufacturing, a substantial reduction in materials waste in processing and a reduction in the total manufacturing time for multi-part assemblies.

The goal of the project will be to further refine and enhance P&WC's (Pratt & Whitney Canada) near and long term Industrial Engineering strategies with respect to development and deployment of Intelligent Manufacturing Cells. Firstly, an understanding of current P&WC Intelligent Manufacturing Cell Projects in parallel with surveying leading Industrial Engineering (IE) research and application development for integration of similar cells within best-in-class mechanical manufacturing industries will be developed.

Non-metallic technologies, including composite materials, have the potential to improve aircraft engines performances and fuel efficiency, and therefore gained a lot of popularity in the aerospace sector in the past decades. Therefore, the overall objective of this research project is to develop an understanding of all available non-metallic technologies, their maturity and value proposition when applied to Pratt & Whitney Canada engines. The intern will contribute to accelerate the development and incorporation of specific non-metallic components in Pratt & Whitney engines.

The main objective of this project is to investigate the performance of LiN-cryogenic technologY, as well as, high pressure cooling (HPC) in turning of hard-to-cut aerospace materials. The performance of cryogenic machining and HPC will be compared to flood coolant to establish the optimum conditions for each cooling technique, in terms of material removal rate, tool life, and surface integrity (surface finish, microstructure and residual stresses).